Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

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BACKGROUND

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Eight years before making Cheyenne Autumn Ford began work on a treatment of the same story loosely based on Howard Fast's novel The Last Frontier with his son Patrick his goal was to make the film on a small scale with unknown Native actors. Needless to say the studios were not enthused. Fast had gone to prison for refusing to name names to the HUAC committee. While he was behind bars he wrote his most famous novel Spartacus which was blacklisted by major publishing houses forcing Fast to self-publish. 

 

Spartacus was adapted for the screen in 1960 by Dalton Trumbo under his own name rather than a pseudonym effectively ending the blacklist. The film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, was produced by Kirk Douglass who also starred in the film along side Lawrence Olivier, Jean Simmons and Charles Laughton. Ford deserves credit for attempting to help end the blacklist four years before Spartacus with a film about Native Americans, starring Natives which would have been a far more modest and meaningful film than Douglass’ flashy epic. 

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PLOT SUMMARY

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After being forcefully moved to an arid desert where they are being starved by corrupt Indian Agents, the Cheyenne depart for their ancestral homeland in protest against the broken promises of the United States Government.

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